After watching a replay from last nights race I could notice some mild lag, when watching it on someone else's it was a lot worse.

We all know there can be inconsistencies in the connection we all receive to other players and I'm thankful that my connection seemed better than others, however I would like to remind everyone that it is YOUR OWN responsibility for your connection which can affect everyone if it is poor.

So just a gentle reminder to make sure your NAT settings are clear and that ideally no one else is using for connection when you are racing - it doesn't matter how many MBs download/upload you have, your ping (connection quality) is key, I currently use a 40mb line and notice no difference to my old 2mb line - because it isn't shared, and no other devices are active on it.

Another thing is to turn laptops/pcs off, sometimes they can download system/virus updates without you even knowing, which could potentially stall your connection

If you want to test you current ping it can be done through the speedtest site:

When I first did some research in to the reasons behind gaming lag everything pointed towards high ping being the most common cause. However, recently we have witnessed some horrendous lag during a couple of TORA GT races where cars were 'tele-porting' backwards and forwards hundreds of feet. Unsurprisingly this caused a couple of huge smashes and the connecting factor appeared to be a high number of cars in the lobby.

As such, myself and CQR MAGiC spent a bit of time researching further to see what the problems might be - the outcome was that, especially with Forza, upload speed is just as, if not more, important than ping.

The following is some info we've posted on the CQR and TORA foums that goes someway to explaining the reasoning:-

As a rule of thumb, for each car in the lobby you need 0.05Mbit (50kbit) upload.

So if you have more cars than your upload speed can support, you'll lag on OTHER people's screen. You won't see the lag yourself, cos your download speed is always much higher and is able to download everyone else's car, but you can't actually send out enough data to everyone else.

And as most UK ADSL connections are set to either 384kbit, 512kbit or 768kbit upload speed, large lobbies (12+) will always have lag until everyone upgrades to fibre connections (which are minimum 2Mbit upload and could theoretically handle 40 cars).

What often causes the huge lag spikes is when the upload becomes what's called 'saturated' - trying to send too much data and there's not even enough bandwidth left for basic upload/download control packets to be sent.

Also, I think part of the confusion people have with Xbox gaming lag is they still think of in PC terms - most PC games traditionally run a dedicated server (or one player is the host server). So everyone else playing on that server simply uploads their data to the server or host, who then sends it out to all the other players. So using this model, only the host or server needs a good upload/download speed, and ping was a more important factor (because there's two 'hops' from one player to another, it goes via the server in between).

Xbox gaming is totally different, games like Forza are Peer 2 Peer (P2P). So everyone player communicates directly with every other player - sending game data, voice chat etc, there is technically no 'host'. So ping is less relevant, and it's that upload speed that now becomes the limiting factor. The more players you add, the more data has to be sent to each and every player and it increases exponentially.

So in a 16 player lobby, there's a total of 225 interconnections between all the cars racing - sending car position data, timing data, voice chat, and people wonder why a 0.4Mbit upload can't handle it.

There will always be other factors that influence lag in lobbies including such things as players downloading PC items at the same time as gaming or other members of the family sharing the connection.

Using Rebandit's connection as an example:-

He should have no problems with his ping or download speed but with only 0.5Mb/s upload he could, theoretically lag on screen for others once the lobby size approaches 10-12 cars.

The bottom line is lag is a pain. It is caused by a number of factors where trying to break them down to individual blame is a little pointless in my point of view.

Be it ping, upload/dowload speed/contention ratio from your local service provider, its all the same in the end. The best we can do is try and get the best service from our ISP`s, make sure out Nat settings are good and cross our fingers.

Even then,,someone with all of these factors in place it might still fall short of performance if ur ISP is running cron based speed tests or the like.

So,,in short, the internet is crap.

G

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XPLR - XBOX Pro League RacingSite Co-Founder

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

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there are so many things that can affect online gaming, even the weather lol

the point of this was to remind everyone that we are all responsible for making sure we do our best to make sure our connections are as good as we can get them - for everyone's benefit

the reason i focused on ping is that when running that test it gives a good idea of connection quality... i could be downloading a film and my download on speedtest probably wouldnt change much if it was only using 1.0mb, but the constant download would affect my ping drastically

2 years ago i wouldnt dare try to play online with a 2mb adsl connection unless it was only my xbox connected

these days i think people think that because they have 50+mb download speed then its ok for the rest of the family to be talking to each other on facebook without it affecting the xbox connection quality

Obviously contention ratio will be a factor but as we don't have an easy way of checking or controlling it it's a very difficult to factor it in to the conversation.

Without understanding what the problems are you can't do anything about seeking a resolution.

I daren't even think about the number of gamers I've seen or heard about running to their ISP's and upgrading to the new 'super-duper' high download package and then still experiencing problems...............why, because download has extremely little to do with lag.

The more information people have at their disposal the more likely they are to have everything in place to ensure a better gaming experience for themselves and everyone else

ISP's are also partially to blame by focussing 99% of peoples attention towards download speed - leading to the general 'willy-waving' culture of stating how wonderfull your new 70MB connection is. It may be great for downloading those adult education films we all enjoy but it doesn't automatically mean you'll have the best gaming connection.

And we don't like leaving people out after all the hard work people put in to practice. No matter how good your download and upload speeds are you can still conflict with people if your NAT is not open. I would suggest port forwarding if you guys haven't done it already.

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XPLR - XBOX Pro League RacingIf you wish to submit a stewards inquiry please do so by clicking >>here<<

Deadlast.. your connection should be fine. based on Jono's info you only need an upload of .8 Mb and you have just over 1.

I'd personally say that the ping would be the most important part of a good connection as that is the actual speed in which it takes one packet to receive a reply but you would also need a decent upload to accommodate the amount of network traffic that you are sending back out to the other players.

I do agree that the ISP's don't give enough info when selling their packages though. they do all just throw the.. well our Download speed is bigger at you lol. and considering everyone else is sharing...

I would also only recommend port forwarding if NAT type is not already set to open. If anyone gets stuck port forwarding theres some good info on here --> http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/or give me a shout if you need a hand as I don't mind helping